They stood face-to-face, both breathing hard, the path light catching half their faces, their eyes locked, his large hands firmly gripping her narrow shoulders. Electricity sparked between them, a familiar energy, and Boldt sensed how precariously close he was to kissing her.
He released her and backed off.
“Oh, God,” she gasped, maintaining eye contact, confirming her own desires.
Lou Boldt nodded imperceptibly, his heart pounding in his chest and then breaking into pieces.
21
Walking to the school bus stop on a wet Friday morning in mid-October, cars everywhere, their drivers anxious and agitated, everyone in such a hurry, Ben sensed he was being followed. Spilling the beans to Emily had not quieted the sensation, as Ben had hoped. He dreamt about it. He felt it at all times. He had absolutely no doubt that someone was back there. It was not something that needed proof. He knew! If Emily could know things, why couldn’t he? Perhaps he possessed the Power as well.
For Ben, all fear, all terror, all misgiving had previously existed in the form, the shape, the image of his stepfather. He had compartmentalized it, defined it, so that he recognized it. For years it had been the only fear he knew. All else was tame by comparison.
Tame, until that moment when Ben realized a second, more palpable fear: fear of the unknown, the unexpected. He had an idea about the identity of the person following him. And of this he had no doubt: He was being watched. It had to do with the money from the truck. Emily had said that things would work out. Ben was not so sure.
To Ben, the sidewalk suddenly felt soft, spongy, like walking across a mattress, and it took him a few strides to realize it was his knees, not the sidewalk. His vision darkened on the edges, as if he were suddenly walking down a poorly lit hallway. As he hurried, nearly running, he gained the courage to glance over his shoulder and sneak a look.
The blue truck! He staggered, nearly collapsing. It moved so slowly that traffic rolled around it as it held to the curb. Ben could not see Nick’s face, but he knew the identity of the driver. He knew what the driver wanted.
At the next intersection, he turned right, cut through traffic, and joined fifteen other kids at the bus stop, hoping for cover. He watched for the blue truck.
“Hey, Ben”-he jumped at the sound of his name-“you want to come over after school?”
Finn Hershey was a school friend with blond hair and a thin face. Like Ben and the others, he was soaking wet from the rain.
“I don’t know,” Ben said, shifting his glance from left to right, bus to truck. He couldn’t think about such things; he had the truck to worry about. The yellow school bus appeared, its big nose topping the hill and dropping toward the waiting kids. At the same instant the blue truck appeared in the intersection, creeping along incredibly slowly as it passed. Thank God it didn’t turn, though for Ben it felt as if he locked eyes with the driver, who was bent low and clearly searching the bus stop. The bus chugged forward, seemingly more slowly than ever. Ben mentally encouraged it.
“If it keeps raining we could hit my Sega. I got a new MK magazine. Some cool stuff in it.”
Mortal Kombat. Ben was something of a pro. Finn was always trying to beat him at the video game, but he wasn’t very good. “Sure,” Ben said.
“It would be cool.”
“Sure.”
“We could call your mom from sch-” Finn caught himself.
“I don’t have a mom,” Ben reminded him.
“I didn’t mean to say that.”
“I know.”
“We could leave a message. You know.”
“Sure.”
“What is it with you?”
The bus arrived, its door swinging open, and the kids fought toward the door. The pickup truck rounded the far corner, heading for the bus stop. Ben shoved his way into the bottleneck, followed by Finn.
“What is it with you?” Finn repeated.
“Nothing.”
Ben was never anxious to get on the bus. Today he was acting different. Fear had changed him, he realized. He clawed his way to a seat near the back of the bus and was forced to relinquish it when told to by a junior Ben had no desire to mess with. He found a seat farther forward.
He looked back in time to see the pickup truck through the rain-blurred back window. Forced to wait behind the bus, the driver sat idle, craning close to the fogged windshield and rubbing it in an effort to see. A line of vehicles had formed behind it, waiting for the school bus to decommission its warning lights and move on.
By the third bus stop, when Ben looked back, the truck was no longer in sight. He decided that it had either moved on or gone ahead. Whichever, it hardly mattered; by that point the driver knew the name and location of his school. He thought back to the airport, to that stupid moment of taking the money. For the hundredth time since that day he touched his back pocket, praying his wallet had reappeared.
The bus stopped in front of the school. In the chaos of the rain and the rush for the front steps, Ben crouched and ducked into the foundation planting alongside the stairs. His head swooned as he caught sight of the blue pickup truck. Out there waiting. For him. Like a wild dog at a rabbit hole: patient and hungry. Ben knew the way it worked. The rabbit never stood a chance.
22
The pressure had built up behind Boldt’s eyes like water in a pipe. Based on the timing established by Emily Richland’s client, another woman was likely targeted to burn. She would be close to thirty years old, a divorced woman, mother of a boy younger than ten. Daphne had followed up as requested. He bore the responsibility to prevent this death from happening, and he had frightfully little evidence to pursue.
Boldt gave a regular morning briefing to LaMoia, Gaynes, Bahan, Fidler, and two other homicide detectives loaned to Boldt from the other squad. ATF had offered agents but Boldt had politely refused, fearing that once he allowed the federal agents inside he might never get them back out the door.
The ATF lab chemist, Casterstein, was an exception to that rule. When he requested a video conference with Boldt, the sergeant accepted, though not without trepidation. SPD lacked video-conferencing capability, requiring Boldt to pay a visit to the ATF offices in the Federal Building, which he feared might be little more than a ploy by ATF to hold him hostage while they convinced him of the importance of their joining the investigation. As an insurance package, he brought along the police lab’s Bernie Lofgrin and all four of his detectives, LaMoia, Gaynes, Fidler, and Bahan. If Casterstein wanted a conference, Boldt would give him one.
The federal offices were newer, cleaner, and quieter than SPD’s, a source of irritation for any cop. ATF and the FBI had access to, or owned outright, state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, computer technology, weapons, and communications systems. Although they were always generous with the equipment, it nonetheless irked Boldt and the others to have to ask, which they did often. Using the video conference room was partly embarrassing for that reason, even though an ATF agent was involved. Boldt and his five ducklings moved through the ATF halls like kids on the way to the principal’s office. The room itself was nearly identical to their own fifth-floor conference room, except for the projection television screen at one end and the video camera mounted on the wall alongside and aimed back at those sitting at the table.
Boldt and the others took seats, several with notepads open in front of them. The lights in the room seemed brighter to Boldt. Two gray devices in the middle of the large oval table, which looked like large square ashtrays, were actually conferencing microphones. At ten o’clock sharp the screen sparkled, and the face of Howard Casterstein appeared, greatly oversized.